Weaver notes that though the black church has “foundational values of freedom, justice, and equality … perhaps no issue reveals the black church’s complex relationship with these foundational values than gay rights.” As Aaron Douglas Weaver wrote in Christian Ethics Today, 70 percent of black voters backed Prop 8 in California in 2008, banning gay marriage in the state until it was overturned by court order. The friction between black gay men and the religious community in the U.S. Traditionally black churches line the avenues. Today, gay men and women gather openly in the neighborhood’s restaurants and nightclubs, gyms and bookstores.Įven more storied in Harlem history is the Christian community.
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In the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the neighborhood embraced gay culture in nightclubs (among them the euphemistic Clam House), and numerous LGBT luminaries such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Bessie Smith and James Baldwin called it home. Harlem has a history of being home to a vibrant and open community. And when young, gay, West African men and women arrive in the U.S., they find a society that may accept their sexuality but often takes issue with the color of their skin. There, black churches grapple with issues of race and sexuality daily. In Harlem, Rodrigue discovered what is effectively a microcosm of the complex national dynamic involving conservative Christianity, race and homosexuality. I was raised Christian.” While homophobia in West Africa has become a separate phenomenon, he says that it is often born of religion. It was so brutal.” He goes on to explain the religious geography of Togo: The southern half of the country is Christian, and the northern half is Muslim. “ thought it was devilish and strange, and they thought I could ‘contaminate’ my cousins. Talking about the roots of the homophobia ubiquitous in Togo, Rodrigue turns to the subject of religion. “I had to try to act ‘normal.’ Some people there are out, but it’s very rare. “It was a pretty clandestine life,” he recalls. Many LGBT West African immigrants fear persecution in their home countries and have sought asylum in the U.S. He is part of a subcommunity of gay West African immigrants - a small fraction of the burgeoning West African population in Harlem, which has led to a stretch of 116th Street being called Little West Africa. Though he was supposed to return to Togo four months later, he never went back. He moved into the International House near Columbia University and embraced his hopeful new life in New York.
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Rodrigue moved to Harlem four years ago, when he was offered a U.N.